


Truth, Fantasy, Reality

by jehane



Category: Les Misérables RPF
Genre: Blowjobs, Caning, Cavity Search, Collars, David derailed, Enemies With Benefits, Forced to Confess Sexual Fantasies to Desired Partner, Games, Head Shaving, Interrogation, M/M, Method Acting Getting Out of Control, Non-Consensual Touching, Polyfidelity, Post-Seine, Sexual Fantasy, Staying in Character as Javert, Truth or Dare, Under-negotiated Kink, Verbal Humiliation, Whips and Chains, authority kink, sexual healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-01-12 03:15:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18437876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/jehane
Summary: Andy Warhol: “Fantasy love is better than reality love" ...or at least that's how it starts.In other words: three fantasies, one truth.





	1. Trust exercises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwelveLeagues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwelveLeagues/gifts).



> TW for sexual violence, dubcon, brief mentions of suicide.

It’s a bit of harmless fun, an idle fantasy. Or at least that’s how it starts.

Critics have been calling David Oyelowo — Golden Globe Award nominee, BAFTA winner — a secret weapon, unbelievably talented; things they don’t even say about Dominic himself. Rumour has it that he’s an actual descendant of Nigerian royalty, and the man is Prince Charming-amounts of handsome enough for it to be true. Their paths have crossed, mostly at Buckingham Palace as ambassadors for the Prince’s Trust, but this is their first time working together, and Dominic has been rather looking forward to getting up close and personal with his princely co-star. 

What a shame that David starts off by keeping himself at arm’s length. 

Dominic usually hasn’t much time for Method actors. The Marlon Brando-esque acting exercises are mostly for grand-standing Americans; no self-respecting Brit would admit to being this full of themselves. But he can’t deny how effective the Method approach has been for David. His co-star has immersed himself in the furious intensity of his character, Inspector Javert — the 19th century cop who’s not-so-strangely obsessed with Jean Valjean — and what’s come out on camera has been absolutely electric. Whatever David’s been doing to wind himself up, to become Javert, it’s been working. 

Or at least that’s how it starts. 

It’s one thing for Valjean to be afraid of Javert. It’s another for Dominic to feel the same way about David. But when it’s just the two of them on set, Javert’s accusing, acrimonious gaze raking hotly over Dominic’s mayoral garb as if he could see the convict’s scars hidden underneath, Dominic is beset by an unprofessional, unsettling pang of fear, and, lately, something that isn’t fear. Whatever it is, it’s making him pull away, when Valjean and Javert are supposed to be going in hard.

The game of truth or dare is Dominic’s idea. So he can get over whatever this is and do his actual job, so the two of them can get close enough to actually trust each other.

They need to do it so they can go at it as hard as it takes, now, and later — in prison, at the Arras trial, during Javert’s years in Paris of relentless chase. Method acting or no, David can’t deny the sense in that.

It takes a while to convince him. The man’s been wearing Javert like a terrifyingly well-cut coat for so long that it’s become second nature off set as well as on. But no one can resist the cunning wiles of Dominic West forever, and so here he is sitting in a camp-chair in Dominic’s shitty hotel room, nursing a mug of warm water, reluctantly subjecting himself to the game as if it were a trial by fire.

Dominic’s own mug is full of single malt Scotch. What’s the fun in doing this sober? 

His co-star is dressed in off-duty casuals: leather jacket, designer jeans, black shirt with the top two buttons loose. It’s hardly an invitation to leer, but Dominic can’t help it — Javert’s always so covered up, stock perfectly buckled around his neck, cravat expertly tied — that this modestly bared line of throat almost seems like wanton exposure. 

He wonders when David will opt for a dare. Maybe later, when they’ve gotten various truths out of the way first.

They circle each other in the first few preliminaries — David gives him the background to the Nigerian prince story; Dominic tells him about Catherine, and Polly, and pounds back a few without needing any daring — and then Dominic gets down to it before David has second thoughts about agreeing to this game.

“Tell me about Javert’s sexual fantasies.”

Of course it comes down to this. It always does. Nine times out of ten, the reason why anyone does anything is because there’s sex at the heart of it. Javert might tell himself differently — _David_ might tell himself differently — but Dominic knows better, even if Valjean has no clue.

David frowns; right on cue, Javert’s righteous outrage flares in his eyes. As he wrestles with the urge to slam down his water and storm out of Dominic’s room, Dominic continues, slyly, “Does Javert even have sex? Andrew said something about the prostitutes in Montreuil, and how Javert might have a loveless shag, y’know, to clean out the pipes…”

“Javert doesn’t do that,” David says, abruptly, too-loud. 

He checks himself, surprise spreading across his face, clearly having caught himself off-guard. Dominic can’t see his own face, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it shows a mirroring shock. After a beat, David mutters, “He wouldn’t. He has too much self-control. When he fantasises...” 

David clears his throat. “When he _allows_ himself to fantasise, he thinks about punishment.”

Dominic can’t stop staring. There’s Javert, sinister and intense behind David’s handsome face. The thought of the Inspector, reluctantly giving in to his body’s needs, slowly overtaken by fantasies long held at bay, opening his trousers and taking his prick in hand the same way he grips his cane, stroking it angrily as if he’s lashing welts into the back of his favourite prisoner …

This is the meat of it, right here — the reason for Javert’s years of pursuit. Nine times out of ten, much as anyone denies it, the reasons are the same.

David visibly takes hold of himself, and with some effort Dominic does as well. “Now it’s my turn.”

Of course Dominic picks truth; it’s why he suggested this game. 

David leans forward. There’s steel in his voice, Javert’s glower in his dark eyes. “Tell me what you’re most afraid of.”

Dominic feels the urgent stab of fear. Trust the Inspector to strike unerringly at the place of Valjean’s weakness, which also happens to be Dominic’s. 

He could tap out, he could call time. He could dissemble, or lie outright. But Javert would know. David would never trust him again. The show would go on, but whatever bond they had would be broken beyond repair.

He doesn’t fight the panic that belongs to both Valjean and to him. He gives in to it, lets it wash over him, lets David see it in his face. 

Lets David have the truth: “Of not being loved.” 

The hound smells blood. David puts his head back; his eyes gleam appreciatively under the low lights. There’s a slow smirk of triumph that belongs to both Javert and to him.

“Is that right? Who would have thought.” A beat, and they both twist the knife. “Whose love are you most afraid of not having?”

The answer’s obvious enough, and David knows it, even if Javert doesn’t — it’s Cosette’s. The love of his children, of his family; the family Valjean lost, the children Dominic cherishes more than anything. Which is why the answer that comes out of Dominic is a surprise. 

“Everyone’s.” 

David sits up sharply. Dominic swallows; it seems he’s finally admitting to himself just what a needy tart he is, that he wants the whole world to love him. It also seems that, under the compulsion of Javert’s gaze, the truth isn’t yet done. 

“The critics’, the cast’s. Tom’s. Even yours. _Especially_ yours, David.”

 _“Why?”_ It’s pure David; Javert would never have let the conversation get this far; would have reacted to this confession with violence. 

Dominic takes a deep breath. Makes himself say, “It’s not your turn yet, it’s mine. Pick your poison, my friend.”

David hesitates in his choice, for the first time that evening. As if he might be afraid of what Dominic might ask him to do; afraid that it might be even worse than what Dominic might ask him to reveal. “Truth,” he says, finally.

“Tell me about _David’s_ sexual fantasies. You and Jessica have the perfect marriage, but there’s got to be some stuff in there that’s just for you.”

David hesitates for a second time. The Adam’s apple works in his throat; his mouth compresses in a line straighter than any Dominic could have drawn with his finger. Clenched around his mug, Dominic’s fingers start to itch.

“Nobody’s perfect. I’m certainly not. We both do have private fantasies. She has a list… and so do I.”

Dominic knows it’s true; David wouldn’t stoop to lying to him, whereas Dominic would if he thought he could get away with it. The follow-up is equally obvious, and David answers it with a smirk.

“Before you ask, you’re not on it.” 

It’s ridiculous — it’s not as if they’re old friends, after all, or as if Dominic is Daniel Craig — but, all the same, Dominic needs a moment. He manages to ask casually, “So who is?”

“Charlize. Idris. Angela Bassett. A couple of dead folks, like Dr. King, so I get to have those on there for free.” 

Dominic thinks about this. “I would never have realised your thing for daddy kink.”

“Jess thinks it’s more sexual narcissism.” David smiles ruefully. “But we shouldn’t need to think too hard about the whys and wherefores of our desires. It’s really not that complicated.”

“Not a proponent of Freud, then? I disagree, it’s always complicated.” Dominic shakes his head. “Just look at Javert. You think his obsession with Valjean’s because he’s obsessed with driving out the evil in himself. Whereas I think it’s because Javert — or at least _your_ Javert — is obsessed with punishing the convict sexually, even though he’d never admit it to himself.” 

David is silent for a long beat. His expression is inscrutable; it’s impossible to tell what he thinks about Dominic’s theory. But at least he’s not telling Dominic off for his crassness, which Dominic counts as a victory.

“My turn,” he says at last. “Truth or dare.”

“Truth, then.”

“Are you a faithful man?”

Fuck, this one takes the wind straight out of his sails. Javert has returned, his dark stare intense and accusing, as if to say: surely a vain, weak, needy man such as the false mayor, as the actor who portrays him, both desperate for the adulation of those around him, wouldn’t have the fortitude for fidelity?

“Not always. I’ve already told you what happened with Polly.” Dominic puts his drink down and takes a deep breath. “Of course Catherine knows; I don’t keep anything from her.” 

“She must be a saint to put up with you,” David remarks, neutrally, but Dominic can hear Javert’s disgust undergirding the words.

Dominic smiles, anyway: the thought of his wife is always cheering. “She is, though possibly not quite in the way you imagine. Our deal is that if I look sideways at another woman, she gets to run me over with the SUV like in _The Affair_. But with the right man, she gets the option to watch.”

David laughs softly. “So only men allowed on your list, then? It must crimp your style, Noah Solloway.”

“Actually, it doesn’t,” Dominic says, honestly, and it’s the gospel truth. It was different before, of course, with Polly and Amanda and the lovers who had graced his struggling-actor’s bed. _He_ was different, before. Now, with Catherine and their family, he has everything he needs at home. 

Except when he’s immersed in a role and going in hard and trusting that the other person on set or on stage won’t let him fall. He’s walked that path with Clarke, who held up Jimmy McNulty from the beginning and who, night after night for weeks in Sheffield, welcomed Iago’s traitorous embrace. He’s walked it with Andrew at the _Pride_ closing party in Cannes. There are men he’s worked with, and opened himself to, and ended up loving, and their shows have been the better for it.

He says as much to David, whose eyes are the same colour as Clarke’s, whose sardonic smile reminds him of Andrew’s, who might be even more talented than the men who’ve visited his trailers and dressing rooms across the globe. 

“You asked me why I’d be afraid you didn’t love me? This is why.”

As he says it, there are the unmistakable stirrings underneath his own shirt. They’ve both lowered their defences enough to feel the tell-tale crackle of something starting.

David leans forward. His handsome face is conflicted — with Javert’s revulsion, or his own attraction, or a combination of the two. 

“You can’t bring it without your co-star’s loving adoration? Seriously, Dominic, this is sexual narcissism on a massive scale.”

“Hey, it works for Ian McKellen,” Dominic says. He takes the ridiculous mug of water away from David, and David lets him. “Seriously? I need to trust you so Valjean can submit to Javert. I’m afraid you don’t love me, and I think I would trust you if you did. Besides, I think Javert’s in love with Valjean, even though he thinks it’s hate instead, so we’re halfway there as it is.”

David takes a deep breath. Doesn’t deny Javert’s feelings, which is a start, or that they’re halfway to anywhere. Doesn’t pull away, either, which might be the most important thing of all.

“How do we know this is helping with your levels of trust?” he asks, slowly.

“I think it is. Your agreeing to play this game, your honesty...” Dominic takes David’s hands. It’s one of the first trust exercises students learn in drama school, to hold a classmate’s hands and trust that they won’t let go. David’s clasp is warm, and secure; Dominic has a brief sense of vertigo, as if he’s a student again, just finding his feet, putting himself into the hands of another actor for the first time. He finds himself gazing into David’s bottomless eyes.

“So, here’s where I confess I haven’t been entirely honest,” David murmurs. “You know when I said you weren’t on my list? What I didn’t tell you is that you’re on Jessica’s.”

“Say what?” Dominic can’t help the jolt of surprise; David is the one who holds on, chuckling a little.

“It’s true; she’s quite the fan of _The Affair_. We both are, actually! Those were some really tight cheeks. Buns of steel. Anyway, don’t worry, you’re up there… Have I destroyed your trust?”

David’s tone is light, but underneath it, there’s genuine concern. And underneath _that…_

Dominic has walked this path before, and he’ll walk it again, but there’s nothing quite like the dizzying moment close to the edge of one thing before it becomes something else.

“…I don’t know,” he manages. “We could try one more round, to see? I think it’s my turn.”

“I think it is. Let’s have a dare, for a change,” David murmurs, and Dominic doesn’t wait to ask — he leans in; he surrenders Valjean’s mouth to Javert, he lets David take his kiss.


	2. Close Shave

The show might be fun and games for Dominic West, but as far as David is concerned, it’s all work: getting into character, becoming Javert, learning what drives him. Learning what he’s interested in — the origins of his obsession with crime, and criminals. One criminal, in particular.

From an early age, Javert believed criminality was inherited. Some men were born in the gutter, and they either surrendered to it or they rose above. Perhaps it was because of this that he was drawn to the study of criminal physiognomy, which theorised that criminals were throwbacks in human evolution, and could be identified by regressive physical attributes such as hawk-like noses and a bulging skull. 

David has been doing the reading: the early writings of Franz Joseph Gall, and the works of Italian army doctor and scientist Cesare Lombroso, who had studied autopsies of prisoners and observed violent inmates at his mental asylum in Pesaro. It’s gripping stuff; Javert was clearly at the forefront of radical, pioneering criminology studies of his time, although David’s well aware of the racist aspect of Lombroso’s work even if Javert isn’t.

David shares Javert’s ideologies with Tom, who tells him that they were debunked as pseudo-science in the later decades. David knows this but Javert doesn’t, and when David locks himself behind the iron bars of the Inspector’s world-view, he finds it difficult to believe that Javert is wrong.

David finds Dominic to be a more receptive audience for Javert’s theories. In fact, Dominic has been unexpectedly welcoming of all David’s ideas about Javert. They’ve taken to in-depth discussions about their scenes and their characters; there have been nuggets of insight and moments of profound connection as the show progresses, as their characters are drawn closer and closer to each other in the show’s circling, acrimonious game of hunter and prey.

Initially, David kept himself at arm’s length, from not just Dominic, but the rest of the cast and crew. Javert had deliberately set himself apart, and David found that a similar isolation helped him get into character; helped him better channel the particular hostility that marked Javert’s relations with Jean Valjean. 

Until the day after shooting the tense scenes in the mayor’s office, when Dominic casually pointed out to him that Javert’s animosity wasn’t just about _loathing_ , but also about obsession. 

David initially disavowed this with a violence that surprised him, and it had been this violence which told him later that Dominic had been right. Since then, he’s made Dominic the exception to his Method rule — had even agreed to playing games of trust with him off-set — and he’s discovered that spending time with Jean Valjean is indeed fuelling Javert’s obsession in ways that isolating himself has not.

He hasn’t told Dominic in as many words, of course. The man’s as insufferable as he is irresistible.

They’ve wrapped their scenes in Limburg and are finally heading to Sedan and the prison hulks of Toulon. Javert is eager to have the population of the bagne at his disposal, so he can catalogue the variations of criminal characteristics in the same way Lombroso did.

“This is what Lombroso suggests,” David tells Dominic, reading off the PDF he’s downloaded onto his Kindle. “The born criminal can be distinguished by physical atavistic signs, such as a large, forward projection of jaw, a low sloping forehead, flattened nose, handle-shaped ears, fleshy, sensual lips, and an indentation at the back of his skull which resembles that found in apes."

Dominic pauses in his efforts to stuff the entire contents of his hotel wardrobe into his carry-on. “Sounds like anyone you know?”

He’s pretending to pout his lips, and David can’t help noting indeed how criminally fleshy and sensual they are. “Now that you mention it, your ears are rather handle-shaped. Here, let me take a closer look…”

Dominic bats the outstretched hand away. “Get off, adjutant-guard Javert. No handling of the prisoners while on duty!”

“I’ll handle you how I like,” David says, automatically; he’s joking, but he suddenly realises Javert is not.

Dominic goes very still, and looks down. For a big man, the curve of his neck is surprisingly graceful. “I think I’d like that,” he says, thoughtfully. “Not that anything would stop Javert once he’s gotten his teeth into something… So, are you going to see if my skull has the ape-like indentation in the back, like the good doctor said?”

David reaches out again, and this time Dominic doesn’t avoid the touch; he lets David run slow fingers through his hair. Dominic’s curls are damp from the shower, devoid of product, they’re velveteen-soft. David muses, “I can’t tell right now. We’ll need to do something about this when we get to Sedan, so that we can see.”

Dominic lifts his eyes. His gaze is opaque, his lashes very golden. “I want you to do it,” he murmurs, and it’s Javert who reacts to this surrender like it’s a blow.

Javert makes all the preparations. When they get to Sedan, and the prisoners of the chain — that is to say, the actors who play them — have their heads shaved by their set stylist, there’s a special arrangement for Prisoner 24601. 

“Such a purist you are, David Oyelowo,” the stylist mutters as he commandeers her implements. “Who’d insist on a straight-razor shave these days?” 

“Javert would,” says David firmly. He’s certain of it; even if all the conveniences of modern day were arrayed before him, the man would insist on observing the fullest rigour of Toulon’s traditions. 

He has Dominic delivered to him in his trailer, a space as small and intimate as Javert’s guard room in the bagne. 

When he arrives, David has laid out the basin, cloths, clippers, the razor, and the old-fashioned shaving tackle that David uses himself. Dominic glances over as David whisks the shaving soap into a lather, then he takes off his robe — and David nearly drops the soap, because Dominic is shirtless underneath it. His shoulders seem to span the walls of the trailer; the boxing-trained muscles gleam under the flickering electric light. 

Dominic smirks a little at David’s reaction. “Didn’t want to get hair on my clothes,” he says, casually. “Besides, Javert is finally going to get up close and personal with all of this soon enough, I thought you might want to prepare.”

The Sedan afternoon is a cold one; Dominic’s nipples have hardened to little pebbles, and the prickle of gooseflesh is making the golden hairs on his forearms stand on end. David clears his throat. “Why don’t you sit down and prepare _yourself_ , convict?”

Dominic seats himself in the only chair and inclines his powerful neck in Valjean’s surly, suffering posture. David runs his hands through the man’s thick hair one last time, enjoying the sensation, before he raises the clippers to cut it off.

Fierce triumph rises up through his throat, and David has to wrestle it away; makes himself do it slowly, though Javert is eager to hack through the luxuriant growth of curls in savage strokes — after all, it’s no more than what the prisoner deserves. Dominic holds himself still, doesn’t fidget under David’s hands, until the job’s done and there’s a thick mass of hair on the floor and the towel spread as an afterthought across Dominic’s shoulders, and an uneven buzz of undergrowth left on Dominic’s skull. 

David runs an approving hand over his handiwork. The stubble rasps against his fingers like an affront. Dimly, he realises that those fingers are shaking.

Dominic’s voice comes from very far away. “See it yet? Do we have a verdict — _’Jean Valjean, you have the skull of a murderer’_?” 

“No.” Javert’s voice is a whip-crack. “Sit still.”

Dominic instantly checks himself, or maybe it’s Valjean. Javert nods approvingly as he brushes the lather onto the knob of stubble over the man’s left ear, and then brings up the straight-razor.

It is slow. Javert wants it to be quick; wants the clean, rapid kiss of the blade to strip away every last dignity Valjean has and every qualm he himself might harbour. But it needs to be done slowly and surely, so that there can be no doubt as to what Javert is doing to the prisoner — and that it is Javert who is doing it, slice by meticulous slice.

Valjean is himself painfully aware of what is being done, what Javert is taking from him. He is holding himself as still as he can, but he can’t control his body’s small, involuntary movements: the broad, burly muscles shivering like a rabbit caught in a trap. Javert cradles the convict’s skull carefully with one hand, positioning it toward the light, moving the blade with the other. One wrong move — one slip of the blade — and vulnerable flesh would be carved open, and the prisoner’s lifeblood would gush out onto the floor, staining the shorn hair with red… 

The razor eventually comes to rest against Valjean’s cheekbone. Valjean’s skull has become smooth now, bare of all remnants of growth; smoother and barer than his rough jawline. Naked, shorn of its disguises, the skull gives up all its secrets — the strongly-formed cranium bulging and atavistic, the tell-tale depression beneath the occipital bone characteristic of violence. 

The blade trembles with Valjean’s rapid breath. Javert realises he is panting, too: with triumph, at unmasking this evidence of criminality, and with something else.

There is a thick mat of hair covering the prisoner’s chest. It follows the muscles of his belly, trails the deep valley that brackets his navel, conceals itself beyond the waistband of his trousers. And beneath the thin covering of fabric, between meaty thighs, is the unmistakable sign of further depravity. 

An answering depravity swells under Javert’s own trousers and within his breast. He’s always known it was there, has always striven to expunge it by sheer force of will, in the same way as he has sought to deny the degeneracy of his birth. But perhaps his efforts have been in vain; perhaps he could no sooner deny his wicked nature as he could alter the shape of his own bones. In this moment, with the prisoner bare and trembling under his hands, he considers a different approach.

One wrong move — one slip of the blade — and the trousers fall apart to reveal the final, debauched proof. 

“On your knees,” Javert says; Valjean sullenly complies, and takes him into his mouth.


	3. Scenes From Canon

It might have started as a bit of harmless fun, and now it’s anything but. The fight for a man’s soul is no laughing matter, and indeed this is why even Dominic West is no longer laughing.

Would a wicked man have given himself up in order to save an innocent from being condemned? A born criminal would have fled with his freedom, would have not hesitated to sacrifice another in order to save himself. And yet the false Madeleine, the fugitive known as Jean Valjean, had surrendered himself so Champmathieu could go free. Valjean was a convict, and yet he had conducted himself as no convict would have, delivering himself willingly into Javert’s hands.

He even _said_ it had been done willingly. The word had fallen from his lips, before witnesses and the full court in Arras. And he had held his wrists out for Javert’s handcuffs, and had allowed Javert to drag him away. 

Here in Ecaussinnes, even after the cameras have stopped rolling, Dominic is hopelessly mired in the dark heart of Valjean’s existential guilt and Javert’s triumph. The policeman has been vindicated, the mayor persuaded to deliver himself up to justice. There are no more masks: no veneers of civility — no director to speculate on an unhealthy obsession that borders on the sexual, no actor to joke about love-hate relationships. What remains is two men who have driven themselves harder than anyone could have believed; what this has come to is the Inspector and his lawful prisoner.

For Dominic, for Valjean, what happens after the trial scene is like a fever dream — a farewell to liberty and happiness. And Javert himself, snatched from the jaws of defeat, has now been overtaken by a giddying triumph, and an even more giddying violence.

 _“You will never win,”_ Javert promised a lifetime ago in Toulon. Here in Arras, that ending has indeed come to pass; it is the Inspector who has won. 

Characteristic of the man, winning involves chains and punishment. The cuffs around Valjean’s brawny wrists, the collar that circles his neck, the chains which secure him to the wall of the holding cell — these further serve to inflame the Inspector’s passions. As Javert dismisses the guards and strips Madeleine’s fine clothes from Valjean’s body, Valjean knows that this is only the beginning of a long unmasking. What he does not know is that it is an unmasking that will not stop with Valjean himself.

“Spread your legs,” Javert commands. When Valjean complies, the Inspector steps in closely and reaches gloved fingers into the anal passage where some convicts might conceal the apparatus of their escape. This particular indignity has not been visited on Valjean since Toulon; he cannot control the sound he makes as Javert’s fingers breach him, nor the shameful, involuntary arousal that accompanies it. 

“Are you hiding something in here?” Javert hisses into his ear. He presses up against Valjean, his uniform buttons dig into Valjean’s bare back, his fingers mercilessly stretch Valjean’s hole. Valjean pants, “Nothing! Nothing,” but of course he is hiding — pleasure and pain and something else, in much the same way as Javert himself.

He struggles against his chains; he can’t help resisting, even though he was determined to surrender. The Inspector does not let this insubordination pass. He strips off his soiled glove, removes his pristine jacket, fetches his cane from the corner of the cell, and he tells Valjean, “Face the wall.”

Valjean is aware that resisting will worsen the punishment. He resists anyway, and sure enough, Javert proceeds to thrash him for it. 

The blows fall across Valjean’s shoulders and back and buttocks, following the scars left there years before by the bagne’s whips. Even more difficult to endure than the pain is the shame of his punishment, which fills his mouth with more bitterness than the taste of his own blood.

He hears himself cry out in desperation. After the second blow he staggers, and by the fourth his legs have given way. His arms stretch above his head, the manacles holding him upright. Astoundingly, he is still hard; his back is on fire, his hole is burningly sore, and the swollen weight of his erection still hangs heavy between his legs.

Sweat and tears run down his face. His ears are filled with the roar of his pulse, with his groans of pain. When the blows stop landing, he becomes aware of ragged panting, of muttered invective — _This will teach you you can never hide from me, I will always find you, you can never win_ — that he has only heard in half-remembered nightmares from his time in Toulon.

Eventually, he rallies enough to look around. 

Javert has collapsed as well, folded to his knees on the floor a stone’s throw away. His usually immaculate clothes are, for the first time, in disarray: his cravat loose, his cuffs undone, his shirt open at the neck. His waistcoat is shockingly askew. Even more shockingly, the front of his trousers is stained. For a dizzying moment Valjean thinks the man has soiled himself, a thing which Valjean has thus far managed to avoid, and then Valjean realises it — Javert’s trousers are damp with his release.

Valjean would never have countenanced the possibility. But there is no hiding the evidence any longer. Javert’s particular fixation on Prisoner 24601, on Montreuil’s mayor, has become a twisted, obsessive bond that is undeniably erotic in nature. 

And what of Valjean’s own response? Does he deny so much to himself, is his body so starved of physical contact, that it would welcome all attentions, no matter how savage and ill-intending? He wants desperately to be wrong, but the truth pulses hotly at the fork of his thighs. 

After a long moment, Javert pulls himself to his feet. He straightens his clothing, he retrieves and dons his coat to cover his shame. Leaning on the cane as if he needs it to support him, he shouts for the guards to open the cell door and let him out. He doesn’t so much as glance in Valjean’s direction. 

Of course Javert will never acknowledge this terrible secret, not even to himself — he would rather die than have it brought to light.

Valjean knows Javert can’t run from this shame forever. Sooner or later, the secrets will catch up with him, in the same way as Valjean’s own secrets — the silver, the coin, the dying woman — were brought into the light. And when that happens, there’s no small chance it will mean Javert’s death. 

Aching and aroused and wrenchingly ashamed, Dominic hopes he’ll survive it himself, even if Valjean doesn’t.


	4. After the Fall

After the river, after Javert decides to make an ending, David has nowhere to go. 

They have two more weeks of filming Paris scenes, but David isn’t required for them. He’s reduced to lurking on the sidelines of their elaborate set, just out of reach of the cameras, in the same way as the ghost of the Chief Inspector might haunt the cobbled streets of the Île de la Cité. The cast and crew give him the same wide berth as they would to Javert’s ghost — clearly, they’re in some doubt as to whether he’s still in character.

Truth be told, he isn’t wholly certain. He’s been immersed in Javert for so long that it’s not clear where Javert ends and where David begins. And now that Javert has made his choice on the banks of the Seine, David’s not sure how to pull himself to the surface once more, and begin the slow climb back up to himself.

“Go home,” Tom tells him, distractedly, as he tries to re-arrange the wedding scenes to capitalise on the Sedan summer light. “Go home,” Enzo suggests; the veteran actor who plays his redoubtable second is packing, too, in order to do just that.

But David isn’t sure he can go home yet, if ever. Javert is at the bottom of the river because he repaid an act of clemency with his own in a fit of madness. Everything he believed to be true, everything he lived his life by, was a lie. He discovered that the convict whom he’d pursued over so many years, whom he’d loathed like the evil he loathed in himself, was instead the apex of virtue; worse, that he’d wrought monstrous suffering in that man’s life. That, had there been true justice in the world, he ought to have loved that convict instead, and, worst of all, that at the bottom of his loathing there was indeed a twisted sort of love.

Having brought himself and the police into disrepute, Javert could do nothing but resign from his position and his life.

Cast adrift from his own position, his old life, David wanders the streets of Sedan that are dressed to resemble the streets of Paris long ago. Most of the students are dead, their actors have moved on, the remnants of the barricades have been cleared away. Jean Valjean, however, is still alive for the moment, his brawny physique and even larger heart too robust to expire even when he’s been robbed of all his happiness.

And between takes there’s Dominic West, joking with Ellie and Josh, posing for selfies and horsing around with the crew and the extras. His broad frame radiates vitality; even when his character is dying of a broken heart, he can’t help being larger than life.

This is the man who personified evil to Javert, and thereafter, all that was good; a man with whom Javert was obsessed for so many years. It stands to reason that David is drawn to him and to Dominic, a pull as inexorable as gravity.

“You’re still here!” Dominic says when he sees David hovering at the day’s end. He claps David affably on the back. “Some of us are going to hit the pub and drink everything that’s _rouge_ in colour; would you like to come with?”

Javert would have liked nothing less; David, who doesn’t drink, has as little incentive to agree. 

He somehow till ends up spending three hours standing in a noisy, smoke-filled pub, crowded up against his cast-mates and the Sedan crew, feeling as if his sense of self has come desperately unmoored.

Dominic’s crammed himself beside David at the bar, and this is the most unmooring thing of all — the casual press of his hip against David’s waist, the way his lips glisten, wine-wet, in the pub’s bad light. At one point in the evening he throws his arm around David’s shoulder to make a point — complimenting David’s acting skills, _how amazing Javert’s death scene was, yeah? Who would have thought the man could cry so prettily!_ — and leaves it there, heavy and profoundly unsettling. When David finally extricates himself, he feels like his anchor has come loose, far out at sea.

David ends up being the designated driver, in charge of ferrying their intoxicated band back to the hotel. Dominic seems mostly unimpaired, but he insists on David escorting him to the doorstep of his room and waiting while he fumbles with his old-fashioned room key.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dominic mumbles as the key rattles uselessly in the lock. “What an idiot. I’m usually much smoother than this...” 

When David manages to wrestle the door open at last, Dominic doesn’t move. He leans against the peeling wallpaper and stares at David with Madeleine’s inscrutable gaze.

“Can I finally invite you in, now you’re done with Javert?”

David inhales deeply — the faintly musty curtains, the remnants of pub smoke, the smell of his co-star’s burnished skin. But he’s not done with Javert; he might never be. “It’s too late,” he hears himself say, and then he’s tearing himself away and walking rapidly down the corridor to his own room. 

He fumbles with his own key, hands unsteady. He washes his face, gets into his pyjamas, sits gingerly on the bed. After a moment he realises he’s shaking, as if he’s still standing on the edge of the Quai de Gesvres, staring into the swirling waters of the Seine.

What was that image Javert saw before his leap — a man with a green cap on his head, a halo around his brow, standing at the summit of a new world that had risen up in the ruins of Javert’s life? David sees it now. 

Javert chose to resign from the new world, chose to jump rather than face up to his obsessions and to seek absolution from his sins. 

David needs to find a better answer.

He doesn't let himself consider what Javert ought to have done. He gets up, belts on his robe, finds his shoes, performing Javert’s final actions in reverse. Then he pitches himself into the unknown of the corridor, towards resolution.

  
  
  
  


Dominic looks half-asleep when he answers the door. His tousled curls stand on end; he hasn’t bothered with a bathrobe, his muscular chest is bare. His eyes widen at the sight of David on his doorstep — clearly taking in the broken man, as bereft as Javert was on the parapet, a man whose own long chase has come to an end, who is finally here to make an ending.

“Come here,” Dominic whispers, and opens his arms. 

David steps into them, holds on like a lifeline.

Maybe together they can make sense of the inexplicable. Dominic tries, anyway: gathering David to his chest, one hand spanning the nape of David’s neck, rubbing his thumb over the vulnerable bones, the other pressed flat between David’s shoulder-blades, comforting David as best he can. When the tears come, as they came at the river, Dominic kisses them away: first David’s wet face and then David’s mouth. Clasped tightly in Dominic’s arms, David feels the cold abyss begin to leech away. 

They come together very carefully, as David imagines Valjean and Javert might have fallen together had the Chief Inspector somehow survived the Seine. Slowly and with great circumspection, Dominic draws off the robe, the shoes, the cotton pyjamas, and takes him into his bed. He runs his big hands up and down David’s bare body in long, comforting strokes, as if he’s trying to rub life and warmth back into a man just rescued from drowning. 

As with many drowning rescues, it takes time to restore warmth to chilled skin and frigid limbs, to stir long-starved flesh to desire. David rouses, finally, panting through his teeth, so hard it’s almost painful. Dominic’s mouth is hot everywhere: sucking slow, heated kisses across collarbone and sternum and erect nipple, before tracing the line of navel with his tongue and then travelling even lower. David hears himself make a noise Javert never uttered in life as Dominic closes his lips around David’s cock.

Dominic stops abruptly. “Are you all right? Is this what you —?”

“Yes, it is,” David mutters. He makes fists in the sheets, tries to gather his self-control. “And so would he, if he hadn’t been such a stubborn bastard.”

“Good thing it’s not him I’m blowing, then,” Dominic snorts, and resumes his efforts. He’s still clumsy from drink, but it’s so good that David’s not going to last; he’s as overwhelmed as Javert would have been, a man who might have gone to his grave without experiencing physical love, let alone the willing caresses of the infamous convict Jean Valjean. 

Such caresses as these would have drawn even Javert out of himself, filling him with the happiness he had never tasted in life. David wants to tell Dominic he’s pleasuring both of them after all, but it seems he’s lost the capacity for words. Dominic takes him deep into his throat, and suddenly David’s on the edge of a very different precipice; he flexes his hands in the soft curls he’d ached to shave off, he anchors himself against Dominic’s reassuring bulk, he casts himself into the air.

This time, there’s someone there to catch him, and bring him back to himself. 

 

  
  
 

David wakes in the morning. Not a stitch on him, he’s naked in the wreck of Dominic’s bed. Sunlight streams in through the hotel window, and limns his co-star’s bare skin in gold.

Dominic’s already awake. Perhaps he has an early morning call time, but he seems in no hurry to leap out of bed. Lying on his belly, chin cupped in his hands, there’s an uncharacteristic fondness in his gaze that might have belonged to Valjean. 

David stretches slowly. His arms and legs are heavy with pleasant, post-coital lassitude. He feels the blood in his veins, the expanse of his lungs, the thrum of life in his body, as if he’s been reborn — as Javert might have perhaps felt, had he been rescued after the fall.

Dominic asks, casually, “So. How’s he feeling?”

And this is a profound question; David stares at his co-star with even more respect. Dominic is looking even handsomer in the light of day, if that’s at all possible, swathed in a sheet that covers precisely nothing of the famously muscular shoulders and even more famous backside. 

“Javert hates you. Or he would, if he wasn’t dead.” David takes a deep breath, inhales the smells of sex and sweat, and the summer morning outside.

He finds himself fitting his hand against Dominic’s cheek, as familiar as Valjean’s has become, and at the same time uniquely Dominic’s. Finds himself saying, “But I love you, and I’m glad to be alive.”

Dominic smiles like daybreak. He sits up, and the sheet slides even lower, exposing the jut of something else that has risen with the morning, and David goes to greet him with renewed vigour.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Smutswap, twelveleagues! I know you said no to noncon, so I hope the scenes in question stay on the right side of that divide! Thanks to my wonderful betas M and K <3


End file.
